Texas: When fracking comes to town

DENTON, Texas — Alyse and Lance Ogletree moved to the Meadows at Hickory Creek, a subdivision of modest houses in this fast-growing city 40 miles north of Dallas, in the fall of 2011. They found the home prices attractive and thought the well-regarded school district would be a good fit for their son, Kyle, who had suffered brain damage after contracting encephalitis when he was 8 months old.

Before closing the deal, Alyse, an electrical engineer in her 20s, asked the salesperson about storage tanks she’d noticed in the field several hundred feet behind the house. The salesperson said they were water tanks, Alyse recalls. She took this to mean the tanks had something to do with the drinking-water supply. 

What the Ogletrees didn’t realize was that they were purchasing a home in a neighborhood near several of Denton’s more than 270 gas wells. They also didn’t know that in Texas and many other states, buying a home doesn’t necessarily entitle the owner to the resources beneath the property. That means energy companies can in some cases drill the area for gas without the homeowners' consent.

Geologists have long known about vast reserves of fuel embedded within underground shale-rock formations around the world, but it was thought to be too expensive to extract. In 1981, an oilman named George Mitchell began to experiment with injecting water and other substances into the Barnett Shale to break the rock and release the fuel. In 2002, Devon Energy acquired Mitchell Energy for $3.5 billion and added its own expertise in drilling horizontal wells, which enabled the company to increase the “pay zone” of each frack. The modern era of fracking had begun.

The process of extraction turns the land into an industrial landscape: There’s the noisy drilling and 18-wheeler trucks that transport millions of gallons of chemical-infused water that’s later shot into wells. After the frack they carry “flowback” from the wells that can contain radioactive matter. That waste fluid is stored indefinitely in injection wells, which some believe increase the risk of earthquakes. The industry’s position is that after the nuisance of drilling and fracking, gas wells quietly pump money and fuel into the economy.

Fracking’s supporters argue that natural gas burns cleanly and will reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil. The gas industry says that fracking supports well-paying jobs. This is a controversial assertion in some states, but less so in Texas, where the importance of oil and gas to the economy is an article of faith. The most contentious questions around fracking involve whether air and water pollution resulting from the process endangers public health. Activists say too little is known about the risks, and are pressing for additional research. The gas, after all, isn’t going anywhere.

The many studies done so far are not conclusive. David Brown, a toxicologist who consults for the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project, a nonprofit, says the gas industry hasn’t provided health data on its own workers who labor on gas pads and bear the greatest risk of exposure to toxins. That’s where a proper health study would begin, he says.

In towns like Reno and Azle, conservative rural communities west of Fort Worth, there are signs of disillusionment with the industry. The area, not known for seismic activity, is near several injection wells and has endured dozens of earthquakes in the last year, with magnitudes in the 2 to 3 range. In January, locals traveled to Austin to testify before the Railroad Commission, the agency that regulates the oil-and-gas industry.

Barbara Brown, a thin woman in her 40s who lives in Reno, has sinkholes in her yard, where she allows her horse to wander free. The holes are wide enough to step in and several feet deep. She blames them on injection wells. 

By the end of the year, Brown was beginning to feel sick. She suffered migraines and the loss of sensation in her limbs. She says she has since been diagnosed with demyelinating disease, a category of neurological ailments that can be caused by exposure to chemicals. Brown, who smoked in front of a visiting reporter, says she has lost two inches of height and a frightening amount of weight. Her daughter often gets nosebleeds when she stays at the house.

Brown feels trapped. “It’s not like we can move. My house is a goner,” she says. “The foundation is completely toast,” a condition she attributes to the drilling and earthquakes.

Sharon Wilson, a salty former energy-industry employee who has become the best-known anti-fracking activist in northern Texas, says homeowners in this situation have no easy answers. “All you can do is gather enough evidence for a lawsuit and then leave.”

Denton, about 40 miles northeast of Azle, is in the heart of the Barnett Shale gas patch. In rural areas the telltale sign of a gas well is a fenced-in field and placards saying, “No Trespassing” and “No Smoking.” But in cities, the placement gets more creative. In Denton, there are wells near the University of North Texas’s football stadium and on the grounds of a high school.

But the prospect of a fracked future for their city has prompted a group of activists to fight back.

“I didn’t set out to be a fracktivist,” says Maile Bush, a fast-talking stay-at-home mother who lives near the Ogletrees in the Meadows at Hickory Creek. “We’re moms and retirees and doctors and lawyers and nurses. We’re not some Berkeley enclave.”

Bush is active in a group called Frack Free Denton, which in February began circulating a petition to outlaw hydraulic fracturing in the city. The petition has received the necessary signatures to force a city-council vote on the issue. If the council votes against a ban, it would then go to a public vote.

Other Texas cities have cracked down on fracking: In December, Dallas banned it within 1,500 feet of homes and other sensitive areas, a restriction the industry considers a “de facto ban.” But that was largely a symbolic gesture since the Barnett Shale merely edges the west side of Dallas County.

Denton’s city government has wrestled with the fracking issue for years. At each step, fracking opponents say, the industry seemed to come away with the upper hand.

In 2011, the city announced the members of a new task force to assess fracking. Much to the irritation of some residents, three of the five voting members had ties to the industry, including Ed Ireland, the executive director of the Barnett Shale Energy Education Council, an industry group.

In January of 2013, the city council approved new rules that, at first glance, seemed like a victory for fracking opponents. For instance, new wells could not be drilled within 1,200 feet of houses. But there were two important loopholes: The rule didn't apply to existing wells, many of which were vertical and could be redrilled horizontally and fracked much closer than 1,200 feet to homes. Secondly, housing developers, like D.R. Horton, which built the Meadows, could proceed to build homes they had already planned as close as 250 feet to existing wells. Because Denton has so many existing wells, those loopholes essentially rendered the 1,200-foot rule irrelevant, fracking opponents say. (D.R. Horton, the nation’s largest home builder, did not respond to numerous requests for comment. The Horton salesperson who sold the Ogletrees their house similarly declined to comment.)

At the city council meeting at which the new rules were announced, several anti-fracking activists were escorted out by police after they exceeded their allotted speaking time. The incident earned them the ire of the industry: Later, Mark Grawe, chief operating officer of Dallas-based EagleRidge Energy, arrived at a meeting in another city with police protection and was recorded cautioning residents that there were people in Denton “preaching civil disobedience” and that “Homeland Security” had put the Denton activists on a “watch list.” (Grawe declined to comment. Other members of the company’s management did not return a request for comment.)

Last summer, enabled by Denton’s new rules, EagleRidge applied to the state to drill on two existing pads, the closest of which is about 250 feet behind the Ogletrees’ home. Drilling began in September on one and in October on the other. It went on 24 hours a day through much of the fall. Mark King, the teacher, is legally deaf but he could hear the drilling without his hearing aid, said his wife, Daisy, and it made their windows vibrate. 

In October, the city filed a lawsuit seeking, among other actions, a temporary restraining order against EagleRidge. A judge rejected the order and the city then dropped the entire suit, mystifying activists. City spokesperson Lindsey Baker wrote in an email that the city wanted “to consider other alternatives.” (Baker didn’t comment on why the city waited until drilling began to sue.)

In November, the city and EagleRidge entered a “standstill agreement,” under whose terms the company can work on 12 wells in the city — including those by the Meadows.

A lull set in and then came the holidays. “It was a really scary time,” says Bush. “You’re not really sure what to expect, but people have told you it’s gonna be dirty. It’s gonna be loud. It’s gonna be smelly. It’s gonna be dangerous.”

Mark Burroughs, Denton’s mayor, says there’s little the city can do. “Frustration and helplessness and victimization permeates the council,” he says.

In Texas, owners of underground mineral rights have priority, Burroughs notes, and can use the land at the surface in any way they want to get the treasure underneath. In some cases, mineral rights were sold off generations ago. (According to state records on the Railroad Commission’s site, four entities own the mineral rights associated with the Meadows wells.) 

If the ban on fracking does pass, it will “no doubt” invite lawsuits, says Burroughs. Mineral rights owners, gas companies and perhaps even the state of Texas might sue, he says.